How we protect the information you
entrust to us
This Privacy Policy is provided to you by Bankers Insurance
Group, Inc. and its subsidiary companies (collectively called
"Bankers"). These include:
Bankers Insurance Company
Bankers Specialty Insurance Company
First Community Insurance Company
Bankers Insurance Services
Bonded Builders Insurance Services
Your Privacy is Important to Us
When you apply to Bankers for any type of insurance, you entrust
us with information about yourself. The law regulates how we
collect, use and disclose that information. Beyond legal
requirements, though, we recognize our ethical obligation to protect
the information you give us.
In order to fulfill that obligation, we maintain a variety of
safeguards in compliance with state and federal regulations. These
include both electronic and physical security measures as well as
operating procedures designed to protect confidentiality. At the
same time, we limit the access our employees have to your personal
information. Only those employees who have a business reason for
needing such information are able to access it. As a further
safeguard, we continuously instruct our employees about the
importance of respecting your privacy and maintaining
confidentiality of personal information. We also take measures as
needed to enforce our company regulations regarding employees’
access to, and use of, your personal information.
What kind of information do we collect about you, and from whom?
Bankers obtains most of our information directly from you. The
application you complete, as well as any additional information you
provide, generally gives us most of the information we need to know.
Sometimes we may contact you by phone or mail to obtain additional
information. We may also use information gained from your other
transactions with us, our affiliates, or other parties.
Depending on the nature of your insurance transaction, we may
need additional information about you or about other individuals
proposed for coverage. We may obtain the additional information from
third parties, such as other insurance companies, government
agencies, information clearinghouses, courts and other public
records.
For example:
- For auto insurance, we may need information from your motor
vehicle records.
- For property coverage, we may send someone to inspect your
property and verify information about its value and condition.
We may also need to take a photo of the property you want to
insure.
- When we handle a claim for you, we may need to review
insurance claim information and other loss information reports,
and/or obtain medical or financial information.
In addition, we may receive consumer credit information from a
consumer reporting agency (CRA). If we need to order a more detailed
investigative consumer credit report, we will notify you as required
by both state law and the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA").
Under the FCRA, you have the right to ask to be personally
interviewed if we order an investigative consumer credit report.
Upon request, we will tell you how to get a copy of the report. The
agency that prepares a consumer report for us may retain that report
and disclose it to other persons as permitted by law. If insurance
coverage is declined, or the charge for coverage is increased
because of information contained in a consumer report we obtained
from a CRA, we will tell you that as required by state law and the
FCRA. We also will give you the name and address of the CRA making
the report.
What do we do with the information collected about you?
Information that has been collected about you may be retained
both in our records and in your agent’s files. We review it in
evaluating your request for insurance coverage and in determining
your rates. We will also refer to and use information in our policy
records when we issue and service your insurance policies and settle
claims. We may also use information about you that is in our files
for insurance marketing purposes or to help you with your overall
insurance programs.
We may retain information about our former customers as well as
current ones. That information would only be disclosed as described
in this notice.
To whom do we disclose information about you?
We usually will not disclose information about you to others
unless the disclosure is necessary to conduct our business.
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our
customers or former customers, except as permitted by law. That may
mean that we could make disclosures to the following types of third
parties without your consent:
Our affiliated companies
Your agent or broker;
Parties who perform a business, professional or insurance
function for our company, including our reinsurance companies
Independent claims adjusters, appraisers, investigators and
attorneys who need the information to investigate, defend or
settle a claim involving you
Businesses that help us with data processing or marketing
Business that conduct scientific research including actuarial or
underwriting studies
Other insurance companies, agents or consumer reporting agencies
as reasonably necessary in connection with any application, policy
or claim involving you
Insurance support organizations which are established to collect
information for the purpose of detecting and preventing insurance
crimes of fraudulent claims
Medical care institutions or medical professionals to verify
coverage or conduct an audit of services
Insurance regulatory agencies in connection with the regulation
of our business
Law enforcement or other governmental authorities to protect our
legal interests or in cases of suspected fraud or illegal
activities
Authorized persons as ordered by a subpoena, warrant or other
court order or as required by law
Certificate holders or policyholders for the purpose of
providing information regarding the status of an insurance
transaction
Lienholders, mortgagees, lessors or other persons shown on our
records as having a legal or beneficial interest in your policy
Companies that perform marketing services on our behalf or to
other financial institutions with whom we have joint marketing
agreements.
How can you find out about information we have about you?
You have the right to 1) know what kind of information we keep
in our files about you, 2) have reasonable access to it and 3)
receive a copy. Contact us as described at the end of this notice if
you have questions about what information we may have on file. Tell
us what information you would like to receive. Provide your complete
name, address, date of birth, type of policy held or applied for,
and numbers of all policies issued to you by us. Be aware, however,
that we are not obligated to disclose to you certain types of
information that are generally collected when evaluating claims or
possible lawsuits.
Within thirty business days of receiving of your request, we will
inform you in writing of the nature and substance of personal
information about you that is recorded in our files and can be
located and retrieved. You may review this information in person or
receive a copy at a reasonable charge. We will also identify the
person(s) or organization(s) to whom we have disclosed this
information within the past two (2) years. In addition, you will be
given the name and address of any consumer credit agency that may
have prepared a report about you so that you can contact them for a
copy of that report if you wish.
After you have reviewed the personal information about you in our
file, you can contact us if you believe it should be corrected,
amended or deleted. Tell us what you think is wrong and why. We will
consider your request and within thirty business days either change
our files or tell you why we have not done so. If we do not make
changes, you will have the right to insert in our file a concise
statement containing what you believe to be the correct, relevant,
or fair information and explaining why you believe the information
on file to be improper. If you choose to do this, we will notify the
people or companies you designate, to whom we have previously
disclosed your information, of the statement you have submitted, and
when we disclose your information in the future, it will include
your statement.
We appreciate the fact that you trust us to handle your insurance
needs, and we do not take that trust lightly. We hope that being
aware of our privacy policy will help you feel even more confident
that we value our relationship with you and are working hard to
maintain the confidentiality of the information you give us.
Sincerely,
Bankers Insurance Group
How to contact us:
We cannot accept inquiries on privacy issues via phone or
e-mail. Please write:
Privacy Compliance
Bankers Insurance Group
11101 Roosevelt Blvd N
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
